Judgment of the Constitutional Court of 15 April 2014 № 11-П on the review of constitutionality of paragraph 1 of Article 65 of the Federal law “On the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and of the Right to Participate in Referendum of the Citizens of the Russian Federation” upon the request of Legislative Assembly of Vladimir Region
- Court:
- Constitutional Court
Dissenting opinion:
Restrictions upon early voting made in recent years may well be explained by growing abuses; early voting is far more difficult to control than voting on election day, and the percentage of those who voted for the ruling party in early voting was much higher compared with the results of the election day. Therefore, such restrictions, although they do raise doubts from the standpoint of “constitutional fundamentalism”, may at the current stage of legal and political development of the country serve as a necessary precondition of truly free expression of people’s will. They do not distort the basic content of the constitutional right to elect and be elected and do not impinge upon its substance. “Every fruit must ripen, and unripe fruit may be poisonous”.
The analysis offered by Justice Kazantsev is correct. The practice of application of the contested law does not testify to its rejection by citizens and law-appliers. The Constitutional Court prescribed returning to early voting, having made in fact a new rule under disguise of “temporary” regulation, which gives an exhaustive list of reasons capable of being sufficiently weighty to justify an early voting. This does not conform to the principle of separation of powers.
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